Coroner identifies man killed in wreck after Anderson County deputy tries to make traffic stop

A man who had been driving away from an Anderson County Sheriff's Office deputy died after striking a tree late Sunday night, according to that agency and the State Highway Patrol.

Sheriff Chad McBride said a deputy was doing a routine patrol on Sherwood Drive near Belton when he saw a burgundy Mercury "swerving and driving pretty erratically."

"In the time that the deputy tried to turn around his patrol car to try to get behind him, the driver of the Mercury gunned it and just quickly put a considerable distance between him and the deputy," McBride said.

file art(Photo11: file)

Anderson County Deputy Coroner Josh Shore identified the driver of the 1997 Mercury Sable as Thomas Jefferson, 62, of Belton.

McBride said the deputy saw Jefferson make an abrupt turn onto Belton Highway, disregard a stop sign and make another abrupt turn on Cherokee Road.

McBride said the deputy activated his patrol car's blue lights at the intersection of Belton Highway and Cherokee Road as he attempted to catch up to Jefferson. But McBride said the deputy had lost sight of the car.

"The deputy kept going down Cherokee Road a little bit until he saw the car," McBride said. "The car was on fire and the deputy got out with his fire extinguisher and called for firefighters and EMS paramedics."

The wreck happened around 10:20 p.m. Sunday on Cherokee Road, south of the city of Belton, said Cpl. Bill Rhyne, a spokesman for the Highway Patrol. Jefferson ran off the left side of the road and struck a tree, Rhyne said.

Rhyne said, in a recorded statement, that the Sheriff's Office had attempted to stop the driver for a traffic violation prior to the wreck.

No one else was injured in the wreck.

McBride said the deputy never got close enough to the Mercury to attempt a stop.

"This wasn't a pursuit or a high-speed chase," he said. "This was a case where an officer saw something that alarmed him — this was right after the Super Bowl and he didn't know if somebody in that car had been drinking or what. He wanted him to stop him, but he couldn't and when he found the car it was wrecked."

McBride said his agency is not doing any additional investigation of the crash. He said the deputy involved in trying to stop the car is not on administrative leave.

"The deputy didn't do anything wrong," McBride said. "The driver of the Mercury obviously made a very bad decision and if he had not, that might have saved his life."

Shore, the deputy coroner, said Jefferson lived on Cherokee Road, not far from the site of the fatal crash.

He said field testing on Jefferson's body showed that he tested positive for having illegal drugs and alcohol in his system. Shore said speed was also a factor in the crash.